Adam Deller is an Australian astrophysicist and educator.
He is a Professor of Astrophysics at the Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing at Swinburne University of Technology."Adam Deller Profile", Swinburne University of Technology. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
Deller is best known for his research into compact objects, including neutron stars and black holes,"Staff Profile: A. Prof. Adam Deller", Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing. Retrieved 26 September 2026. and for developing the DiFX software correlator, a tool widely adopted in radio astronomy."GPU Acceleration of the DiFX Software Correlator", Astronomy Data and Computing Services (ADACS). Retrieved 26 September 2026. In 2020, he was awarded the Pawsey Medal by the Australian Academy of Science."Swinburne astronomer awarded Pawsey Medal for scientific excellence", Swinburne University News, March 2020. Retrieved 26 September 2026.
Early life and education Deller grew up in Geelong, Victoria, attending Western Heights College, where he graduated as school Dux in 1999."Adam Deller – Curriculum Vitae", Swinburne University Astronomy Department. Retrieved 26 September 2026. He pursued his undergraduate studies at Swinburne University of Technology, completing a dual Bachelor of Engineering in electronic and computer systems with first-class honours.
He shifted focus to astronomy during his postgraduate studies, earning a PhD in astrophysics from Swinburne University in 2008. His doctoral thesis, titled Precision VLBI astrometry: Instrumentation, algorithms and pulsar parallax determination, laid the groundwork for high-throughput software processing of data gathered from radio telescope arrays.
Career and research Following his PhD, Deller worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in the United States and later held a research position at ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy. He returned to Australia to join the faculty at Swinburne University of Technology, where he serves as an Australian Research Council Future Fellow and an Associate Investigator for the Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Research (OzGrav).
Deller's primary research focuses on high-resolution radio astronomy, specifically using Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) to measure the precise distances and movements of pulsars, neutron stars, and black holes. His observational work has contributed significantly to tracing the local environments and origin points of Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs).
In addition to observational astronomy, Deller is the originator and primary coordinator of DiFX (Distributed FX ), an open-source, software-based correlator. Developed during his doctoral studies, DiFX allows standard computer clusters to process data collected by geographically separated radio telescopes, replacing expensive, custom-built hardware architectures.Deller, A. T., Tingay, S. J., Bailes, M., & West, C. (2007). "DiFX: A software correlator for very long baseline interferometry using multi-processor computing environments." arXiv. doi:10.1086/513572. The software has become the de facto standard infrastructure tool utilised by major observatories globally, including the Australian Long Baseline Array, the Very Long Baseline Array (USA), and the Event Horizon Telescope network.
Awards and recognition
2010: Awarded the Charlene Heisler Prize by the Astronomical Society of Australia for the best astronomy PhD thesis. 2018: Received the Vice-Chancellor's Research Excellence Award at Swinburne University. 2019: Awarded the Peter McGregor Prize by the Astronomical Society of Australia as part of the DiFX collaboration. 2020: Awarded the Pawsey Medal by the Australian Academy of Science for outstanding early-career research in physics."2020 Honorific Awardees", Australian Academy of Science. Retrieved 26 September 2026. References